Book of Common Prayer
The Majesty of the Lord
93 The Lord is king. He is clothed in majesty.
The Lord is clothed in majesty
and armed with strength.
The world is set,
and it cannot be moved.
2 Lord, your kingdom was set up long ago;
you are everlasting.
3 Lord, the seas raise,
the seas raise their voice.
The seas raise up their pounding waves.
4 The sound of the water is loud;
the ocean waves are powerful,
but the Lord above is much greater.
5 Lord, your laws will stand forever.
Your Temple will be holy forevermore.
The Lord of Power and Justice
A psalm.
98 Sing to the Lord a new song,
because he has done miracles.
By his right hand and holy arm
he has won the victory.
2 The Lord has made known his power to save;
he has shown the other nations his victory for his people.
3 He has remembered his love
and his loyalty to the people of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
God’s power to save.
4 Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth;
burst into songs and make music.
5 Make music to the Lord with harps,
with harps and the sound of singing.
6 Blow the trumpets and the sheep’s horns;
shout for joy to the Lord the King.
7 Let the sea and everything in it shout;
let the world and everyone in it sing.
8 Let the rivers clap their hands;
let the mountains sing together for joy.
9 Let them sing before the Lord,
because he is coming to judge the world.
He will judge the world fairly;
he will judge the peoples with fairness.
Praise God for What He Has Done
For the director of music. A song. A psalm.
66 Everything on earth, shout with joy to God!
2 Sing about his glory!
Make his praise glorious!
3 Say to God, “Your works are amazing!
Because your power is great,
your enemies fall before you.
4 All the earth worships you
and sings praises to you.
They sing praises to your name.” Selah
5 Come and see what God has done,
the amazing things he has done for people.
6 He turned the sea into dry land.
The people crossed the river on foot.
So let us rejoice because of what he did.
7 He rules forever with his power.
He keeps his eye on the nations,
so people should not turn against him. Selah
8 You people, praise our God;
loudly sing his praise.
9 He protects our lives
and does not let us be defeated.
10 God, you have tested us;
you have purified us like silver.
11 You let us be trapped
and put a heavy load on us.
12 You let our enemies walk on our heads.
We went through fire and flood,
but you brought us to a place with good things.
13 I will come to your Temple with burnt offerings.
I will give you what I promised,
14 things I promised when I was in trouble.
15 I will bring you offerings of fat animals,
and I will offer sheep, bulls, and goats. Selah
16 All of you who fear God, come and listen,
and I will tell you what he has done for me.
17 I cried out to him with my mouth
and praised him with my tongue.
18 If I had known of any sin in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened to me.
19 But God has listened;
he has heard my prayer.
20 Praise God,
who did not ignore my prayer
or hold back his love from me.
14 “You are always to remember this day and celebrate it with a feast to the Lord. Your descendants are to honor the Lord with this feast from now on. 15 For this feast you must eat bread made without yeast for seven days. On the first day, you are to remove all the yeast from your houses. No one should eat any yeast for the full seven days of the feast, or that person will be cut off from Israel. 16 You are to have holy meetings on the first and last days of the feast. You must not do any work on these days; the only work you may do is to prepare your meals. 17 You must celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because on this very day I brought your divisions of people out of Egypt. So all of your descendants must celebrate this day. This is a law that will last from now on. 18 In the first month of the year you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. 19 For seven days there must not be any yeast in your houses. Anybody who eats yeast during this time, either an Israelite or non-Israelite, must be cut off from the community of Israel. 20 During this feast you must not eat anything made with yeast. You must eat only bread made without yeast wherever you live.”
21 Then Moses called all the elders of Israel together and told them, “Get the animals for your families and kill the lamb for the Passover. 22 Take a branch of the hyssop plant, dip it into the bowl filled with blood, and then wipe the blood on the sides and tops of the doorframes. No one may leave that house until morning. 23 When the Lord goes through Egypt to kill the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the sides and tops of the doorframes, and he will pass over that house. He will not let the one who brings death come into your houses and kill you.
24 “You must keep this command as a law for you and your descendants from now on. 25 Do this when you go to the land the Lord has promised to give you. 26 When your children ask you, ‘Why are we doing these things?’ 27 you will say, ‘This is the Passover sacrifice to honor the Lord. When we were in Egypt, the Lord passed over the houses of Israel, and when he killed the Egyptians, he saved our homes.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped the Lord.
The Good News About Christ
15 Now, brothers and sisters, I want you to remember the Good News I brought to you. You received this Good News and continue strong in it. 2 And you are being saved by it if you continue believing what I told you. If you do not, then you believed for nothing.
3 I passed on to you what I received, of which this was most important: that Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures say; 4 that he was buried and was raised to life on the third day as the Scriptures say; 5 and that he was seen by Peter and then by the twelve apostles. 6 After that, Jesus was seen by more than five hundred of the believers at the same time. Most of them are still living today, but some have died. 7 Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. 8 Last of all he was seen by me—as by a person not born at the normal time. 9 All the other apostles are greater than I am. I am not even good enough to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But God’s grace has made me what I am, and his grace to me was not wasted. I worked harder than all the other apostles. (But it was not I really; it was God’s grace that was with me.) 11 So if I preached to you or the other apostles preached to you, we all preach the same thing, and this is what you believed.
Jesus Rises from the Dead
16 The day after the Sabbath day, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought some sweet-smelling spices to put on Jesus’ body. 2 Very early on that day, the first day of the week, soon after sunrise, the women were on their way to the tomb. 3 They said to each other, “Who will roll away for us the stone that covers the entrance of the tomb?”
4 Then the women looked and saw that the stone had already been rolled away, even though it was very large. 5 The women entered the tomb and saw a young man wearing a white robe and sitting on the right side, and they were afraid.
6 But the man said, “Don’t be afraid. You are looking for Jesus from Nazareth, who has been crucified. He has risen from the dead; he is not here. Look, here is the place they laid him. 7 Now go and tell his followers and Peter, ‘Jesus is going into Galilee ahead of you, and you will see him there as he told you before.’”
8 The women were confused and shaking with fear, so they left the tomb and ran away. They did not tell anyone about what happened, because they were afraid.
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.